Mumbai Airport’s main runway shut for 4 hours due to pothole, multiple flights delayed

A pothole on the main runway, likely developed due to heavy rainfall, affected flight operations for hours at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport on Sunday morning.

According to reports, rains had led to a pothole on one of the taxiways, forcing the airport authorities to shut the main runway and resulting in delays in aircraft movement.

Incidentally, this was the second time in less than a month that the Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL) had to shut the main runway – 009/27 – for operations.

The runway was earlier shut on September 20, when an inbound SpiceJet flight had skidded off the main runway and got stuck.

As for Sunday, the runway remained out of use for around four hours in the morning following which the operations were shifted to the capacity-constrained secondary runway – 14/32.

“As a result, both arrivals and departures were affected with the incoming flights reporting an average delay of two hours, while departures getting delayed by almost an hour till the afternoon,” a source told PTI.

However, a spokesperson of the MIAL told the agency that the runway closure resulted in a delay of “half-an-hour”.

Confirming the development of the pothole on a taxiway due to rains, the spokesperson said the main runway was shut for operations at 6 am and the services could be resumed only at 10 am after the problem was fixed.

“Runway 009/27 was not available from 6 am due to a pothole between the N1 and N3 runways. Due to the repair work on the taxiway, the secondary runway was put into operations,” the spokesperson added.

The pothole was filled in about 30 minutes using a quick-fixing agent and traffic at the main runway was finally restored at 10 am.

According to Flightradar24.com, a total of six flights were cancelled while another 122 arrivals and 242 departures were delayed due to the runway’s closure on Sunday.

With PTI inputs